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Category: robotics/AI – Page 2,551

AMA: I’m Zoltan Istvan, a transhumanist US Presidential Candidate. Ask me anything!! : Futurology

Come “ask me anything” right now!!! I’m trying to answer all questions I get asked:

Hi Reddit,

Thank you for having me here. My name is Zoltan Istvan, and I’m a futurist, journalist, and science fiction writer. I’m also the 2016 Presidential candidate for the Transhumanist Party.

For the last 725 days, I have been campaigning full time to spread transhumanism and life extension policies across America and the world. While I never expected to win the US Presidency, my campaign has received a lot of attention—both good and bad—for its emphasis on radical science, technology, secularism, and futurist ideas.

During my campaign, I’ve spoken on transhumanism at the World Bank, consulted with the US Navy on artificial intelligence, got a chip implanted in my hand, interviewed with underground group Anonymous, and drove a coffin-shaped bus called the Immortality Bus across America to deliver a Transhumanist Bill of Rights to the US Capitol. My 20-point political platform has many futurist policies in it, but some of the most important ones are supporting a Universal Basic Income, classifying aging as a disease, legalizing all drugs, creating a Transhumanist Olympics, and taking money from the military and giving it to science.

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Scientists have built a Nightmare Machine to generate the scariest images ever

We’re supposed to be building robots and AI for the good of humankind, but scientists at MIT have pretty much been doing the opposite — they’ve built a new kind of AI with the sole purpose of generating the most frightening images ever.

Just in time for Halloween, the aptly named Nightmare Machine uses an algorithm that ‘learns’ what humans find scary, sinister, or just downright unnerving, and generates images based on what it thinks will freak us out the most.

“There have been a rising number of intellectuals, including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, raising alarms about the potential threat of superintelligent AI on humanity,” one of the team, Pinar Yanardag Delul, told Digital Trends.

Teslas Are Teaching Each Other How to Drive Better Than You

Your Tesla can drive itself. Not just on the highway, not under strict guidance, but everywhere. Or at least, it will have all the necessary gadgets to do so soon.

We are excited to announce that, as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

– Tesla Blog

VERE’s Mind Control Robots Give Patients Out-of-Body Experience

Ready to leave your body behind? Scientists have developed robots that people can remotely control and embody using their minds, a breakthrough set to revolutionize the lives of paralyzed patients. The Virtual Embodiment and Robotic Re-Embodiment (VERE) project “aims at dissolving the boundary between the human body and surrogate representations in immersive virtual reality and physical reality,” meaning that people genuinely feel like the surrogate body is an extension of themselves. Three volunteers have tried out a prototype, and the results are promising.

“The feeling of actually embodying the robot was good, although needless to say, the sensation varied over time,” said Alessandro, a volunteer on the project, in an interview published Wednesday. “When the robot was stationary, the feeling of embodiment was low, but the moment I gave the first command or changed direction, there was this feeling of control and increased embodiment.”

The three volunteers, based in Italy, placed an electroencephalogram (EEG) cap on their heads that scanned for brain activity through the scalp. Patients were given a video feed of what a robot in Japan could see, superimposed with arrows. When the wearer focused on one arrow, the machine was able to detect the signal and send it remotely to the robot.

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